Aconitum napellus
by ilurandir
Summary: What happens after Tyler leaves Brigitte in her room after administering the monkshood? What goes through her mind? Brigitte considers her lycanthropy, her situation, and Sam. Please read and review


She tried not to think of him, really. Especially not when it was Tyler sliding his hand over her thigh, and Tyler's blue eyes flickering up to her own, with that look that she was beginning to understand, but was far from familiar or comfortable with.

Sam's eyes had been brown, and not as full of laughter as mischief as Tyler's but they were more captivating somehow, to her. In the image of him she had in her mind, it shook her, made her breath catch - partly because she'd pushed him out of her mind for so long, and partly because in the image she held in her mind, she couldn't tell if he was looking at her with concern for her wellbeing - trying to cure her sister of lycanthropy - or terror, because his insides were spilling out of a hole torn in his belly, and there was blood bubbling and frothing in the back of his throat.

She heard the door click behind Tyler as he walked out. The haze or convulsions of a girl reeling on drugs held no interest for him. Instead, he liked the danger of it all - the risk of having a patient suck him off, him an orderly, in the abandoned, unlit halls in the basement of Happier Times Care Centre; or the moment where she finally broke down, and slipped her pants over her thighs and spread her legs so that he could inject their poison of choice. Heroin, morphine, speedballs… or Wolfsbane. _Aconitum napellus _or _aconitum anthora._ She'd been planning on trying that in the Spring - the yellow version of monkshood. Perhaps it would be stronger. Perhaps it would work better. Perhaps it would even be a cure.

After the pain from the poison stopped seething under her skin, burning and twisting in her belly, and now low in her thighs. It hurt her bones, this "cure". It had been so much better, everything seemed so much brighter in its bleakness, when she thought that the monkshood was really a cure for the monster growing slowly in her mind and her body - taking her over as surely as a cancer, or a parasite.

She unclenched her jaw from her toothbrush, which she had bit down on to stop herself biting her tongue. Or screaming. It had teeth marks in it, gouged deep in the green plastic, and her jaw ached from the sudden relaxation. A thin strand of saliva clung from her bottom lip to the handle of the brush as she rolled over onto her back and let her arms fall to her sides.

Her fucking pubic bone ached, a deep, empty feeling that she imagined might come from sex, or a bruise. The kind of bruising you got from a mountain biking accident, or the kind of hurt and hollowness of being raped.

She reached up and wiped her mouth as the drug settled inside her, and the pain burned away like morning fog, leaving her with just a vague headache, and a faintly sick feeling in her gut.

"_How bout you take this, and we blow," _Sam had said softly to her in the pantry in her house, both of them crouched and shivering on the floor, cooking the flower petals like opium with a spoon and a lighter between them.

Somewhere outside, the werewolf - her sister - prowled and panted - hungry and violent. Cursed to never be satisfied, no matter how many hearts she tore out, how many bones she crushed between her jaws.

Brigitte felt like Ginger had already torn out her heart, long before the wolf took over her body so completely and turned her into someone Brigitte didn't know, or understand.

All her life, she'd understood her sister.

Now she barely understood herself. Brigitte Fitzgerald was not the girl that pulled down her elasticized-waist, care-facility pants for boys with needles. Boys who turned to the mirror and fixed their hair after they poured the drug she so desperately needed onto the bathroom floor, while she felt everything crash in around her, and the throat close off with terror.

"_If you keep me here, people are gonna die."_

It was only a matter of time before the curse took over, really. All she had to do was look in the mirror to see the wolf rising inside her - its grey eye, with the pupil dilated from bloodlust and desire completely obscured her blue. Its spine cracking and twisting her own until it protruded from her back like the heads of railroad nails.

Soon her veins would rewind, reroute her bloodflow. Her fingernails would curve outward and split her skin, and her fingers would curl in like an arthritic woman's, stiff and twisted. Her teeth would grow long, sharp. Already in the mornings she would wake up to the soft tissue in the back of her mouth torn and bloodied by teeth that should have been wisdom teeth, but were, instead, elongated and jagged.

She didn't know she was crying until her lungs pulled in the air in a sharp, sudden breath.

She found herself wishing, not for Ginger, but for Sam, who would have stood by her if Ginger hadn't killed him. Sam, who would have had a plan, who would insist she keep trying. Who was the only person that didn't grate on her nerves, unlike the crying, snarking girls in the care facility. In Group, where they talked about their drug abuse, their minds circling in on themselves, their sexual traumas.

Sam who understood what was happening to her - who believed in werewolves and most of all, in her.

Brigitte reached up and pressed her palms against her face, wiping the tears away, brushed the wet hair at her temples back and sat up. Faced her dark, empty room. She could hear the dripping faucet in the bathroom - wasn't sure it if was because her hearing was more acute than a human's or if it was simply that quiet.

Somewhere in the hallway, a patient began to scream.

Soon those screams would be caused by her, and not a drug withdrawal.

She had to get the fuck out of here.


End file.
